


Only Gods

by Cruciferous_Jex



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Hordak - Freeform, Hordak is a good dad, Other, Science Experiments, baby rabies, creation of Imp, fatherhood kind of, imp, whoops I made a baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 18:34:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20605412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cruciferous_Jex/pseuds/Cruciferous_Jex
Summary: A oneshot about the creation of Imp that elbow-dropped my brain until 4am last night, so please enjoy Hordak's goddam baby rabies.





	Only Gods

Hordak had spent his life in the constant company of his Brothers. He'd rarely been alone, much less lonely, much less how horrendously lonely he'd at times been on Etheria. He felt the lack of family keenly, missed their voices and scent. 

Hence Imp.

That he had never managed to clone a body for himself was not entirely true. He had, and on his first attempt no less. A perfect vessel, flawless in its code, the result of years painstaking labor. It would take twenty years to mature into a proper container for an Emperor. Prime was able to expedite this process into months, but it involved ingredients and power sources unavailable on Etheria. So, Hordak settled in for the long haul. All he had to do was wait and watch his immortality thrive in the vitrine before him. It was his prize creation. He placed it in the center of his Sanctum and kept an eye on it always, so he would know the moment anything went wrong. 

For three years he watched it grow from a strange little lump into an organism with distinct fingers and toes and a face. It began curled up, as was typical for a clone, but to his suprise one day stretched out, flexing its fingers, floating blissfully in the green creche fluid. 

This alarmed Hordak greatly. Given he was never overly involved in any aspects of the Horde's reproduction, but he'd never seen a tanked clone move. 

"What is wrong with you?" he muttered before the vitrine console. "What is wrong with you?"

The scans sent back nothing. He went over every inch of the clone's form with his own eyes, stepping slowly around the tank with his hands on the glass, looking for any sign of decay or mutation on its little knees or claws or wings. But nothing appeared amiss, and the scans read perfectly normal.

Hordak pointed at the tank. 

"Cease moving," he commanded it.

It did not cease moving. It spent most of its time curled in the proper position, but every so often twitched and jerked and splayed its limbs. The scans never indicated any problem. Perhaps this was normal? He'd never spent any great amount of time on the creche decks of the flagship where he himself was gestated. Maybe tanked clones always moved? Hordak came into the sanctum one morning to see it had flipped itself upside down, arms and legs spread to the four winds, a smug expression on it's sleeping face.

"Well don't you look happy with yourself!" he said. He tried to muster up some anger or frustration but, oddly enough, could not. He shook it off and settled for annoyance. "I told you not to move. Little imp."

He spent the whole of that day working in the green light of that ridiculous upside-down urchin. When the Force Captains came in for a briefing their eyes went wide. Hordak glanced back at the clone - it looked absurd - but the Captains dared not say anything. They simply reported on their most recent defeat against Bright Moon.

"You lost twenty soldiers, three skiffs, and runestone data it took years to obtain," Hordak snarled at the cringing Captains. "There will be punishments for this idiocy. There will be-"

There was a loud thud from the tank. Everyone in the room startled and turned. The clone had kicked the side of its container. It's heel slid against the glass loudly.

Hordak cleared his throat and turned back to the Captains. 

"Explain yourselves," he growled, looking at the head Force Captain.

"Sir, we - we were - unprepared-"

"Unprepared?" Hordak snarled. "The Horde takes you from your miserable lives, expends untold energy raising you, feeding you, training you, providing you with best technology and weaponry and planning on Etheria, and you dare say to me that you were UNPREPARED?"

Another loud thud from the tank. The clone slammed it's little heel into the glass once, twice, three times, as though stomping out whatever was causing upset in the Sanctum. The Force Captains took a visible step back, their eyes wide.

Hordak gestured to it. "Even he can see that it is a flimsy excuse, Force Captain. You have failed me. Now get out of my sight while I decide on an appropriate punishment."

They bowed and rushed out the room, doing everything short of running. Hordak turned to the tank.

"I told you to stop moving," he muttered to it, tapping on the glass. "I have business to conduct here. Your interruptions will not do."

It placed its foot on the glass as if to show it to him. Counterargument, it seemed to say, observe my little foot. Five tiny toes. Look at all these little lines on my sole, so perfectly made. 

"That's very nice," Hordak said, "But you must stop. They're more afraid of you then they are of me."

Despite himself Hordak smirked. He had never explained to the Force Captains what the clone was. To them it just appeared one day as the centerpiece of his Sanctum. He saw them stare at it every time they came in. He knew it "freaked them the fuck out." Or so he'd overheard. 

He did enjoy that. 

The question in their faces. The awe and terror. The struggle as they attempted to understand the contents of the Sanctum and failed. He decided he liked the fear the clone inspired in them. It was good to cultivate the aura of one who dabbles in the dark and profane and twisted when dealing with Etherians. It kept them on their toes. It was not as though this was too far off the mark, after all. Soon he would have to detank the clone, open it's skull, and make some ... minor alterations. 

It was a few deep snips, very simple really. A few connections cut which rendered the brain ready for transfer. It needed to happen within a four hour window of a brain hormone reaching a certain saturation point or the entire endeavor was lost. Hordak kept a tracker with him that would go off the second it was time. 

He watched the hormone numbers slowly rise over the next month. The clone returned to its proper position for a while then flipped and twisted in place, kicking its chubby legs, smiling peacefully. One time it stretched its arm over its head and pointed upwards, little wings outstretched, as if to say there, there is where I'm going, into the sky.

"You're staying right here," Hordak said.

The wing twitched. 

"Those will fall off when you mature," he said to tank. "It is said that only gods keep their wings. That is why they are the symbol of the Horde."

The little finger pointed with more insistence. The face scrunched up tight and yawned.

Hordak's entire body snapped to attention. It had never opened its mouth before. He had a nearly overwhelming primal impulse to get the baby out of the water. It was helpless and in terrible danger.

He remembered he was the terrible danger. 

Hordak swept some data pads off the console in frustration and walked out. 

The alarm went off that night. He looked at it with dread, which was not what he expected at this milestone. There was no reason to fear, it was a simple procedure he was well prepared for. He would drain the vitrine of the pre-surgical creche fluid, perform the procedure, then replace it with post-surgical fluid which kept the brain from repairing itself. And there it would remain for twenty years, growing steadily into his next vessel, but definitely not flipping or pointing or smiling or yawning or kicking the side of the tank.

He did not look at the clone as he prepared for the procedure, setiing up a tray with scalpels and clamps and tubes. As he drained the tank fluid its little body was caught by a net, which lifted it up to the top of the tank for Hordak to remove and take to surgery. 

He finally forced himself to look. It was limp now, sleeping. He gingerly reached in and picked it up. It was warmer than he expected. Heavier. Out of pure instict he held it to his shoulder, one hand protectively over its back. It melted into him. He touched it's head. The tuft of hair there was the softest and most delicate thing he'd ever felt. 

"Well," he whispered to it. "It's time."

But he could not make himself move. He just stood there, feeling the weight of it against him. He shut his eyes. It had been so long since he'd known the scent of another of his people. A million sense memories of Prime's flagship bubbled their way up to the surface, filling him with longing for home. For his Brothers. He missed so desperately having others of his kind close by, and they did not get closer than this child on his shoulder.

It's little hand teached out and touched the skin of Hordak's throat. He swallowed hard.

"Stop. Get to work," Hordak chided himself. He gathered his resolve and turned towards the operating table, white and sterile, the instrument tray ready. The sharpness of the tools was repellent to him. 

"No. This is not a child," he said to himself. "This is a container. It is your future." 

The baby pressed its face to Hordak's neck, sharp little teeth nibbling at his skin. It's mouth was warm. It cooed.

"Quiet!" Hordak snapped. "Quiet now. You've been a very bad boy, always moving and now you're making sounds. I never did that when I was in the tank," Hordak said, though he had no way to be sure. "I was good. I stayed still. Never uttered a word till I breathed air for a week, and here you are not ten minutes old, making noises. I -"

"Keh," the baby said, and gurgled.

The light glinted off the scalpels and clamps on the tray next to the surgical table. Those looked sharp, he thought. He didn't want the child anywhere near them. Hordak glanced upwards as though entreating a higher power to help him, to stop this terrible churning in his stomach and chest. To make this child into the cold dead container he needed it to be, magically and without his involvement. 

Hordak paused. Turned in an anxious circle. Gently bounced the infant before forcing himself to a stop.

What the hell was he THINKING? No, this was ridiculous, the procedure was the only sensible way forward. The four-hour surgical window was ticking past, and he had contaminated the pre-surgical creche fluid. There was no going back now.

There was an another problem. What Hordak had now - what he had inadvertently created - was a permanent toddler. 

Clones did not have the ability to grow outside a tank until the age of ten, when soldiers underwent tank removal. From the age of ten they could reach full maturity on their own, but not before. Until that point they needed close monitoring, the intoduction of certain hormones and nutrients into the creche fluid at certain times, or they would simply stop growing. If he did not go forward with the procedure now it would remain this size and shape, forever an infant, complete with wings and tail. 

Hordak knew nothing of infants. He did not know how to teach it to talk and walk and keep itself clean. Ten year old clones were uploaded with this information just before detanking and were thus immediately self-sufficient in that sense.There was no time for potty training in the Horde. On Etheria he had dedicated a portion of the infirmary to serve as an orphanage but he could not in good conscience send a brother of Prime be to raised among lesser beings.

Hordak could - he supposed he could - upload the basic knowledge and self-sufficiency of a ten year old tankling into this three year old brain and hope some of it stuck. At this stage the brain was still malleable enough, still had enough growth hormone to work with. That would go a long way towards making the little imp a tolerable companion, which, Hordak supposed, was what it was to be if he went through with this. With ... keeping it.

No! No, this was an absurdity! What in the hell would he DO with it? There was no space in his life for an infant, no matter how independent. What if it cried? The scalpels still shone on the table. Hordak could still save himself this trouble and gurantee himself immortality. 

The baby nibbled at his neck. Slid his little arms around him and cuddled in close. Made a happy, curling little coo, and sneezed. 

No, he realized. No, he could not.

Hordak shut his eyes and gave a final defeated sigh. The fight was over. The imp had won.

"This is stupid," he muttered. "This is so utterly stupid."

The child shifted it's weight, dropping his head back to show Hordak a big smiling mouth full of razor sharp baby teeth. He pointed his tiny finger. Showed him a little foot. Here I am, he seemed to say to Hordak. Look at all I have!

"Yes, I see," Hordak sighed reluctantly, taking the foot between his fingers and wiggling it. "I do see that. Come now."

He turned away from the operating table and carried his child to his personal rooms to dry it off and find something to wrap it in, his choice made, for better or worse. Had he known he'd never again be able to generate a flawless new body for himself he may have chosen differently. But he was more naive then. Etheria had not yet drained him. Back then he assumed if he'd achieved something once he could do it again. In the ensuing years he would learn, over and over and over, that this was not the case.

But in that moment Hordak did not know that, so he gave the child's head a gentle scratch. Imp smiled. Hordak found himself smiling back. He was filled with warmth. With relief that he'd chosen not to lift a scalpel to this little thing. He was ... glad. 

How the hell had this happened? What supernatural force made Hordak abandon immortality for a creature that was logistically useless to him? Likely a huge burden? 

Hordak looked down at the sleeping mystery in his arms, pondering its power over him. His little wings fluttered. Wings he would keep forever. Hordak took one between his fingers, paper thin and sweet. 

Ah.

That was, Hordak decided, a proper explanation. One that made sense to him, that explained the child's extraordinary power.

Only gods kept thier wings.


End file.
